Alexa, Honey, Go Get Me Some Coffee

February 2018

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Amazon and Microsoft have partnered to combine Alexa and Cortana in what is called Alexa for Business. In a press release, Amazon downplayed Cortana’s role, which will only be in the background, if at all. To date, Alexa for Business has 20,000 skills, a number that is growing as Amazon collaborates with third-party developers. In addition, Alexa for Business has the capacity to learn specialized skills programmed by users. Basic tasks include consulting calendars, reminding users about promised follow-ups, making calls, sending messages, patching people into conference calls, reserving meeting rooms, ordering new supplies, and reporting equipment failures. Alexa for Business also serves as a switchboard for calling up other services, like Concur and Splunk; with its current skills, booking travel plans and briefing a user with LinkedIn data are also expected to be just around the corner. The device is also expected to cultivate loyalty for Amazon Web Services.